Preserving unique scent of old book as cultural heritage

Published on April 12nd 2017

On Friday 7th was announced on the “Heritage Sciences” international academic journal that a project to preserve unique scent of old book as cultural heritage will soon be initiated. The announcement was made by the research team at University College London Institute for Sustainable Heritage, headed by Professor Matija Strlic.

Researcher Cecilia Bembibre extracts the smell of a 18th-century Bible, to be logged using her "odour wheel". Photograph: National Trust/James Dobson (The Guardian)

This project follows several experiments from the researchers in London and at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery in the U.K, during which they presented to visitors an unlabeled historic book smell sampled from a 1928 book found in a second-hand bookshop in London. 70 percent of visitors said the scent that old books give off is pleasant. They asked visitors what the smell made them think of, and asked them to describe it. The most often used words were “chocolate”, “cocoa”, “chocolatey”, followed by “coffee”, “old”, “wood” and “burnt”, and words such as “fish”, “'body odour”, “rotten socks” and “mothballs” were also mentioned by visitors.

"The smell of heritage". Researcher Matija Strlič with his nose in a book. Photograph: Supplied (The Guardian)

The team has collected the smell of old books for analysis and confirmed that volatile organic compounds are emitted when old books decompose, and that is what produce the smell. By analyzing scents of old books, datas could be used as a diagnostic tool by conservators, to understand the preservation condition of objects including books, like their state of decay, through an olfactory profile.

Bembibre investigating the science of book smells in the lab. Photograph: National Trust/James Dobson (The Guardian)

Researchers indicate that the project will enable us to preserve and promote historically different sort of scents, and to keep track of old times in a way that has never been done before. In addition to identify and conserve smells, this project could also, potentially, be a way to create an olfactory experience in museums, where visitors could understand and experiment what the past smelled like through personal connection with exhibits and recreated smells.